Feelings about Bush, war drive high state turnout

Driven by intense feelings about President Bush, the economy and the Iraq war, Minnesota voters responded Tuesday to unusually nasty and hard-fought campaigns by forming long lines at the polls.

The state's vote was partly a referendum on the Bush administration, something Republicans had campaigned to avoid.

Two in five of the Minnesota voters interviewed for the National Election Pool Exit Poll said opposition to Bush was a reason for their choice of U.S. Senate candidate. Just under one in five said their vote was intended to express support for Bush, leaving a minority saying Bush wasn't a factor in their decision.

"The Republicans tried very hard to localize these races, but they obviously didn't succeed," said William Flanigan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Minnesota.

Economy is top issue

Still, the economy rose to the top of the list of issues that mattered to voters. Although most of the voters in the exit poll said Minnesota's economy is in good shape, that issue edged out the Iraq war, crime and terrorism as extremely or very important issues. Values issues such as gay marriage and abortion came in a distant fifth.

When it came to the Iraq war, 55 percent of the voters who were interviewed said the United States should withdraw some or all of the troops now, and 59 percent disapproved of the war.

Typically, though, partisan positions are fairly entrenched in Minnesota, leaving independents to play a decisive role in elections. About one-fourth of the voters who participated in the exit poll identified themselves as something other than a Republican or a Democrat.

And they tilted Democrat in the Senate race, with Klobuchar getting 67 percent of their vote. In the race for governor, though, their vote was split between DFLer Mike Hatch and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. The voters' ranks split almost equally between men and women, college-educated and those without college degrees.

There had been speculation that financial and sex scandals in Washington would discourage religious conservatives from voting. Although this year's exit poll didn't identify preferences of religious conservatives, it did find that regular churchgoers turned out with about the same relative strength as in 2004. Forty-two percent of the voters interviewed said they attend church once a week or more, up from 40 percent two years ago.

Voter turnout was high throughout Minnesota, said Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, but official estimates of the turnout were not available when this edition of the Star Tribune went to press. In 2002, 63.6 percent of Minnesota's qualified voters went to the polls, the highest turnout for a non-presidential election in more than half a century. Kiffmeyer predicted this year "is very likely comparable."

The high turnout does not signal a new spirit of civic engagement, said Curtis Gans who directs the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University.

Instead, it reflects anger and fear related directly to Bush and the Iraq war, Gans said. It comes in spite of underlying problems that had depressed turnout during recent decades.

"There are a whole series of identifiable problems that have not been resolved in our politics ranging from civic education to the alignment and strength of the parties to the coverage of politics to the erosion of trust in the way we conduct our campaigns," he said.

He gets no argument from Laura Smith, 45, who yearned, even as she voted in Sartell, Minn., for a new campaign system that "wasn't so disgusting."

In the exit poll, nearly three-fourths of the voters said Kennedy had attacked Klobuchar unfairly, while just over half said Klobuchar had attacked unfairly.

Despite the millions that candidates poured into the final few days of their campaigns, most voters in the exit poll had made up their minds well in advance. About six in 10 voters said they made their pick for the U.S. Senate more than a month ago. Still, one in 10 decided within three days of the election, enough to make a difference in tight races for other offices.